Are smart people deliberately acting stupid? The Rise of the Anti-Intellectual

Nadeem Paracha in The Dawn
 


Across the 20th century, intellectuals played an important role in political parties and governments, both democratic and authoritarian. According to Richmond University’s Professor of Politics Eunice Goes, intellectuals perform several roles in the policy-making process.

They help politicians make sense of the world. They offer cause-effect explanations of political and economic phenomena, and diagnoses and prescriptions to policy puzzles. They also help political actors develop ideas and narratives that are consistent with their ideological traditions and political goals.

But in this century, politics has often witnessed a backlash against the presence of intellectuals in political parties and in governments. This is likely due to the strengthening of the parallel tradition of anti-intellectualism, which was always (and still is) active in various polities.

This tradition has been more active in right-wing groups. It was especially strengthened by the rise of populist politics in many countries in the 2010s. But mainstream political outfits in Europe and the US still induct the services of intellectuals, even though this ploy has greatly been eroded in the Republican Party in the US after it wholeheartedly embraced populism in 2016, and still seems to be engulfed by it. 

Since the 1930s, the Democratic Party in the US has always had the largest presence of intellectuals in it. This policy was initiated during the four presidential terms of the Democratic Party’s Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932-45), during which time a large number of intellectuals were inducted. Their role was to aid the government in bailing the US out of a tumultuous economic crisis, and to develop a narrative to neutralise the increasing appeal of organisations on the far right and the far left. This tradition of inducting intellectuals continued to be employed by the Democrats for decades.

Interestingly, even though the Republican Party has had an anti-intellectual dimension ever since the early 20th century, it carried with it intellectuals to counter intellectuals active in the Democratic Party. This was specifically true during the presidencies of the Republican Ronald Reagan (1981-88) who was, in fact, propelled to power by an intellectual movement led by conservatives and some former liberals. This movement evolved into becoming ‘neo-conservatism’ during the Reagan presidencies. Britain’s Labour Party and Conservative Party have carried with them intellectuals as well, especially the Labour Party.

Some totalitarian regimes too employed the services of intellectuals in the Soviet Union, Germany and Italy. The Soviet dictator Stalin was not very kind to intellectuals, though. But intellectuals played a major role in shaping Soviet communism. Hitler’s Nazi regime had the services of some of the period’s finest minds in Germany, such as the philosophers Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, the logician Rudolf Carnap, and a host of others.

They helped Hitler mould Nazism into an all-encompassing ideology. Just how could some extremely intelligent men start to both romance as well as rationalise a brutal ideology is a topic that has often been investigated, but it is beyond the scope of this column.

In Pakistan, three governments banked heavily on intellectuals to formulate their respective ideologies, narratives and economics. The Ayub Khan dictatorship (1958-69) carried scholars who specialised in providing ‘modernist’ interpretations to various traditional aspects of Islam. This they did to aid Ayub’s modernisation project. The intellectuals included the rationalist Islamic scholars Fazalur Rahman Malik and Ghulam Ahmad Parwez, and, to a certain extent, the progressive novelist Mumtaz Mufti and Justice Javed Iqbal, the son of the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. The writer Qudrat Ullah Shahab was Ayub’s Principal Secretary.

Z.A. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was studded with intellectuals who remained active in the party during at least the first few years of Bhutto’s regime (1971-77). These included the Marxist theorist JA Rahim who (with Bhutto) wrote the party’s ‘Foundation Papers’ and then its first manifesto. He also served as a minister in the Bhutto regime till his acrimonious ouster in 1975.

Then there was Dr Mubashir Hassan, who was the main theorist behind PPP’s concept of a ‘planned economy’. He served as the Bhutto regime’s finance minister. The intellectuals Hanif Ramay and Safdar Mir wrote treatises to counter the ideologies of the Islamists. Ramay also formulated the party’s core ideology of ‘Islamic socialism’. The lawyer and constitutional expert Hafeez Pirzada too was a founding member of the party. He was one of the main authors of the 1973 Constitution.

The Ziaul Haq dictatorship adopted the Islamist theorist Abul Ala Maududi as the regime’s main ideologue. Maududi was also the chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). Zia, when he was a lieutenant general in the early 1970s, used to distribute books written by Maududi to his officers and soldiers. Maududi passed away in 1979, just two years after Zia overthrew the Bhutto regime. But Zia continued to apply Maududi’s ideas to his dictatorship’s ‘Islamisation’ project.

Zia also had the services of the prominent lawyers AK Brohi and Sharifuddin Pirzada. Brohi and Pirzada were instrumental in formulating the murder charges against Bhutto. In his book, Betrayals of Another Kind, Gen Faiz Ali Chisti wrote that Brohi and Pirzada encouraged Zia to hang Bhutto, which he did. Pirzada also wrote oaths for judges sworn in by Zia that omitted the commitment to protect the Constitution. He would go on to do the same for the Musharraf dictatorship (1999-2008). In fact, Sharifuddin Pirzada had also served the Ayub regime.

The rise of populist politics in the second decade of the 21st century has greatly diminished the role of intellectuals in political parties and governments. This is because populism is inherently anti-intellectual. It perceives intellectuals as being part of a detested elite. Therefore, for example, one never expected intellectuals of any kind in Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). This is why the nature of this party’s narrative is ridiculously contradictory and even chaotic.

However, in a January 2022 essay for The Atlantic, David A. Graham wrote that it’s not that intellectuals have vanished from political parties. Rather, due to populism’s anti-intellectual disposition, they have purposely dumbed down their ideas.

According to Graham, “This is the age of smart politicians pretending to be stupid.” If stupidity can now attract votes and save the jobs of intellectuals in parties and governments, then smart folks can act stupid in the most convincing manner. Even more than those who are actually stupid.

The US Elections - "Key Issues not Discussed"!

 

Inflation - do we have a choice?

 

The Challenge of China

 

How the British royal family killed off republicanism

The democratic case against the monarchy is clear, but even Labour knows it would be electoral suicide to make it writes Larry Elliott in The Guardian 

 

‘Trump’s appearance highlighted that the monarchy has made itself virtually impregnable and that the republican cause in Britain has rarely been weaker.’ Composite: AFP/Getty Images/Guardian design


From Harry Truman to Donald Trump, there have been 13 US presidents since the Queen came to the throne in 1952, so she has plenty of practice in hosting a state visit for the world’s most powerful man. Unsurprisingly, Trump loved the British establishment making a fuss of him – from the 41-gun salute to the British lamb washed down with vintage claret at the Buck House white-tie banquet. Both Downing Street and the White House considered the trip a great success, with talk – wildly premature – of a giant Anglo-American free trade deal.

But the real winner from the visit was not a lame duck Theresa May or Trump – who quickly moved on to other things – but the royal family. There was widespread praise for the way in which the Queen handled Trump, even using her speech at the banquet to big up the international institutions he so frequently derides. The occasion also showcased one of the UK’s few world-class industries: heritage. Tourists are money, as someone once said.

But there was more to it than that. Trump’s appearance highlighted that the monarchy has made itself virtually impregnable and that the republican cause in Britain has rarely been weaker.

Things looked rather different a couple of decades ago. When Princess Diana died in a Paris car crash in 1997, the Queen seemed ill-prepared for the national blubathon that followed. Her initial response to her daughter-in-law’s death was seen as cold and insensitive and – after what today would be called a social media storm – she was forced to go in front of the cameras to quell the public outrage.

Tony Blair, newly arrived as prime minister, was seen to have better captured the public mood with his depiction of Diana as the “people’s princess”. More significantly, Blair’s government was committed to a package of constitutional reforms, including devolution for Scotland and Wales. This created the opportunity to have a debate about whether Britain could really be modernised if it remained a monarchy.

As it happened, Blair was a royalist and would never have countenanced the idea of turning Britain into a republic, but that didn’t prevent the idea being canvassed. In 2000, this paper called for a referendum on what sort of head of state Britain should have after the Queen’s death. “People ought to be able to say whether they would prefer to have an elected head of state or to continue with a monarchy. Do they want to be citizens or subjects?” we asked.

The arguments in favour of turning Britain into a republic are no different from what they were 19 years ago. They involve democracy, power, governance, class and distribution of wealth. It is difficult, if not impossible, to have a proper discussion about tackling inequality while leaving the monarchy out of the equation. But in 2000 there was a realistic possibility of change. The royal family was rather like one of those long-established high street businesses that have fallen on hard times as a result of the retail revolution. The product looked a bit out of date; those in charge of running the business were old and stale; customers seemed less happy with the service they were getting.

But since then, two things have buttressed the monarchy’s position. First, external events have been helpful. At the turn of the millennium, the world economy was in the middle of a long boom marked by rising living standards, low inflation and falling unemployment. The absence of an economic crisis created the political space to think about other issues. But since 2007, Britain has been in a semi-permanent state of economic and political crisis, with the deep recession of 2008-09 followed by post-2010 austerity and Brexit. Even had there been a growing drumbeat of support among voters for a republic, Westminster would have had other priorities.

‘There was widespread praise for the way in which the Queen handled Trump.’ Photograph: Pool/Reuters

But while this was happening, the House of Windsor provided other struggling businesses with a masterclass in how to reinvent themselves. First, it understood that the underlying strength of the brand meant there was no need to panic. Britain has always tended to be a conservative country wary of radical change, which is one of the reasons the vote to leave the EU came as such a surprise in 2016. Despite all its problems in the 1990s – including the bitter divorce between Prince Charles and Diana, and the row over the Queen’s tax bill – there was always strong residual support for the monarchy. Had there been a referendum in 2000 on whether to have an elected head of state, it would almost certainly have gone in favour of the status quo.

Second, there was a change in the management team, with the older members of the royal family being replaced in the public spotlight by William and Harry. This was a smart move. The Windsors didn’t want to end up with all its most avid supporters gradually dying out: it saw the need to appeal to a younger audience.

If that meant embracing social media then so be it; the royals embraced new technology. Whereas previous royal babies have been announced through the mainstream media, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced the birth of their son on Instagram.

Third, the royals have had the nous to avail themselves of the best image consultants and PRs that money could buy. The idea has been to show that the new generation of royals – William and Kate, Harry and Meghan – have the same commitment to public duty as the Queen, but with a bit more of the touchy-feely empathy demanded today.

If it all seems to have worked, that is in large part due to the weakness of the competition. Persuading Britain to dispense with the monarchy would be tough in any circumstances. Persuading Britain to choose a replacement for the Queen from the current crop of politicians, tarnished as they are by economic torpor, the expenses scandal and Brexit, would be a complete non-starter.

In his diaries, Tony Benn describes watching the establishment gather for the service in St Paul’s cathedral to mark the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977. “We haven’t removed the grip of this crowd from British society, far from it, but on the other hand the public accepts it all and the press plays it up to divert people from unemployment and the cost of living and the EEC and so on. It is a very important ingredient in British life and it has to be thought about.”

It certainly does need thinking about, but there will be no referendum on the monarchy’s future any time soon. There was no mention of republicanism in Labour’s 2017 election manifesto and it’s hard to envisage the next one being any different. As things stand, it would be electoral suicide.

What the Working Class Is Still Trying to Tell Us

David Brooks in The New York Times



Republican supporters waited to enter a rally in Indiana where President Trump was campaigning days before the midterm elections. Credit Leah Klafczynski for The New York Times


I was ready for massive Democratic turnout for the election on Tuesday. But I was surprised how massive the Republican turnout was in response.

The Republicans who flooded to the polls weren’t college-educated suburbanites. Those people voted for Democrats this year.

They weren’t tax-cut fanatics. Half of the Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee either left Congress, ran for other offices or were defeated.

They weren’t even small-government Republicans. The same red states that elected conservatives to office also — in Nebraska, Idaho and Utah — approved ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid. The same red states that elected conservatives also approved initiatives — in Arkansas and Missouri — to raise the minimum wage.

These were high-school-educated, working-class Republicans.

A lot of us pundits said Donald Trump should run a positive campaign bragging about all the economic growth. But Trump ran another American carnage campaign. That’s because American life still feels like carnage to many.

This is still a country in which nearly 20 percent of prime-age American men are not working full time. This is still a country in which only 37 percent of adults expect children to be better off financially than they are. This is still a country in which millions of new jobs are through “alternative work arrangements” like contracting or consulting — meaning no steady salary, no predictable hours and no security.

Working-class voters tried to send a message in 2016, and they are still trying to send it. The crucial question is whether America’s leaders will listen and respond.

One way to start doing that is to read Oren Cass’s absolutely brilliant new book, “The Once and Future Worker.” The first part of the book is about how we in the educated class have screwed up labor markets in ways that devalued work and made it harder for people in the working class to find a satisfying job.

Part of the problem is misplaced priorities. For the last several decades, American economic policy has been pinioned on one goal: expanding G.D.P. We measure G.D.P. We talk incessantly about economic growth. Between 1975 and 2015, American G.D.P. increased threefold. But what good is that growth if it means that a thick slice of America is discarded for efficiency reasons? 

Similarly, for the last several decades American, welfare policy has focused on consumption — giving money to the poor so they can consume more. Yet we have not successfully helped poor people produce more so that they can take control of their own lives. We now spend more than $20,000 a year in means-tested government spending per person in poverty. And yet the average poverty rate for 2000 to 2015 was higher than it was for 1970 to 1985.

“What if people’s ability to produce matters more than how much they can consume?” Cass asks.

The bulk of his book is a series of ideas for how we can reform labor markets.

For example, Cass supports academic tracking. Right now, we have a one-size-fits-all education system. Everybody should go to college. The problem is that roughly one-fifth of our students fail to graduate high school in four years; roughly one-fifth take no further schooling after high school; roughly one-fifth drop out of college; roughly one-fifth get a job that doesn’t require the degree they just earned; and roughly one-fifth actually navigate the path the system is built around — from school to career.

We build a broken system and then ask people to try to fit into the system instead of tailoring a system around people’s actual needs.

Cass suggests that we instead do what nearly every other affluent nation does: Let students, starting in high school, decide whether they want to be on an apprenticeship track or an academic track. Vocational and technical schools are ubiquitous across the developed world, and yet that model is mostly rejected here.

Cass also supports worker co-ops. Today, we have an old, adversarial labor union model that is inappropriate for the gig economy and uninteresting to most private-sector workers. But co-ops, drawing on more successful models used in several European nations, could represent workers in negotiations, train and retrain workers as they moved from firm to firm and build a safety net for periods of unemployment. Shopping for a worker co-op would be more like buying a gym membership. Each co-op would be a community and service provider to address a range of each worker’s needs.

Cass has many other proposals — wage subsidies, immigration reforms. But he’s really trying to put work, and the dignity of work, at the center of our culture and concern. In the 1970s and 1980s, he points out, the Emmy Award-winning TV shows were about blue-collar families: “All in the Family,” “Taxi,” “Cheers,” “The Wonder Years.” Now the Emmy-winning shows are mostly about white-collar adults working in Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, New York and Washington. 

We in the college-educated sliver have built a culture, an economy and a political system that are all about ourselves. It’s time to pass labor market reforms that will make life decent for everybody.

The Tea Party have successfully undermined everything Obama has attempted

Mark Steel in The Independent

Now the American government is open again, I wonder what tactic the Tea Party will try next to get their way. One favourite must be chilli powder down Barack Obama’s underpants. One of their senators will explain in a live interview from Washington, “We have no choice but to do this until the President shows he is willing to negotiate”, while in the background we can hear, “Yeaaagh they’re on fire”, and Michelle saying: “Don’t put your fingers in your eyes love or they’ll start stinging as well.”

Or they’ll set a leopard loose in the House of Representatives, as a legitimate means of expressing the will of the common man from Utah. Whatever they do, to them it seems utterly reasonable, so they make statements such as, “It’s the President who is causing this conflict, by insisting on implementing the policies he was elected on. So what choice did we have but to urinate over the Democrat senators in alphabetical order? It’s only what Abraham Lincoln would have done?”

The issue that’s angered them this time is Obama’s healthcare plan, designed to address the problem of millions of Americans having no access to healthcare. The Tea Party has a carefully considered objection to this policy, which is on the home page of its website. It’s worth repeating in full to do justice to the prose. It goes “Destroy Obamacare. This abomination from hell must be eradicated.”

As with all the best political writing, it’s the delicate details that make it so engaging. To start with, this displays an impressive knowledge of The Bible, as few people are aware of the section that goes, “And God saw that Satan had spread his wickedness among the people. And he did say unto Abraham ‘Eradicateth this abomination for they will burn in hellfire who are carried upon a stretcher with no charge’”.

John Culberson, a Tea Party spokesman from Texas, was slightly less subtle, declaring his support for the strategy of shutting down the country by saying, “Like on 9/11, let’s roll”, a reference to the passengers who said “Let’s roll” before confronting terrorists on their plane. This could be worrying if he visits an NHS surgery in Britain. He’ll stab all the doctors, and explain: “I could see one of them diagnosing gastro-enteritis without charging a fee and knew I had to act straight away.”

To be fair, the Tea Party takes up other issues as well as healthcare, employing the same subtle arguments. Their supporter Stephen Schwarzmann, a hedge-fund billionaire, contributed to the tax debate by saying: “Tax rises on equity firms is a signal for war, like when Hitler invaded Poland.” It could be argued it’s even worse, because at least when Hitler invaded Poland the casualties couldn’t run crying to the Third Reich for free medical care.

Maybe the reason they come up with minor exaggerations is they struggle without them. Tea Party senator Louis Gohmert was interviewed about whether the deal they've agreed to was a success. In his exact words, this is how he answered: “The fact is all those children gathered round by Nancy Pelosi and they weren’t of legal consent age and we’ve stolen $12bn dollars from those children and the least we can do and all we’re asking if we had leaders who do the right thing they look listen it’s illegal.”

I wonder how many people saw that and thought, “At last, someone who’s saying exactly what I’m thinking”. It appears they’re reasoning is the Republican Party lost the election because in crucial swing states such as Ohio, voters thought “the trouble with Mitt Romney and his supporters is they’re not do-lally enough”. In which case none of this matters, as it only ensures they’ll lose by even more next time.

But maybe there is logic to their strategy. Because since Obama became President, the Tea Party Republicans have been able to undermine everything he’s attempted. Even the budget following this agreement is seven per cent less than the amount Obama originally proposed. The healthcare plan will still leave around one fifth of the population with no care, and many of the promises, such as closing Guantanamo Bay or on gun control, have been abandoned altogether. Partly this has been a result of backing down to the constant niggling of the Tea Party.

Obama even had to spend much of his first year in office proving he was the President as they insisted he wasn’t born in America. So they can do that again. For example if Hillary Clinton wins they’ll say they’ve got evidence she’s Russian and fought at the Alamo on the side of the Mexicans, and her real name’s Hillary Mohammed Trotsky Lucifer Compulsory Free Liver Transplants For Everyone Even If You’re Completely Healthy Jihad Abortion Clinton.

They’ll say she was born under the sea, and they’ve got evidence she eats live squirrels, and it’s their constitutional duty to flood the Senate with mercury until she agrees to abolish tax for oil companies. Because for many of the rich and powerful, why bother going through all the hassle of winning an election to get your way, when it’s much easier and more fun to let the other side win, then refuse to accept the result and bring everything to a halt until they do as you want anyway.

Obamacare begins – and the right is terrified that it will work

Rupert Cornwell in The Independent

In a week in which all the talk was of shutdown, the most notable development here in Washington was something that opened up. I refer to the launch of the online federal and state health exchanges that are a key feature of Obamacare, allowing those without health insurance to shop around for the best plan.

Readers who have managed to keep up with the latest antics of what passes as the United States Congress will be aware that the reason Republican hardliners shut down the government was to force the President to delay – or to put it less politely, dismantle – his signature legislative achievement. Yet in a splendid two-finger gesture by fate, on the very day that veterans' services, national parks and a host of other government functions were closing, the health exchanges, symbol of everything those Republicans detest about Obamacare, were opening for business.

True, the moment was pretty shambolic. Overwhelmed by visitors, the websites virtually seized up on day one, though things seemed to improve slightly as the week wore on. But it was a start, and let it never be forgotten what Obamacare is attempting: to bring the US in line with every other advanced industrial country and provide healthcare for all its citizens, irrespective of their means.

Others had tried it before. Harry Truman called for universal health insurance in the late 1940s, only to be described by Republican adversaries as a crypto-communist. Two decades later, Lyndon Johnson did push through Medicare and Medicaid for elderly and poor Americans. Not, however, before a certain aspiring conservative politician named Ronald Reagan predicted that Medicare would see Americans "spending their sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like when men were free".

Then came Bill Clinton. Alas, he created the impression that a coterie of White House officials, led by his wife, Hillary, was trying to foist its pet ideas upon a suspicious country and he, too, failed. But in 2010, after a monumental fight, Obama's plan was finally approved by Congress.

Yet still Republicans continue their Canute-like refusal to accept the rules of democracy. No matter that the measure was signed by the President and ratified by the Supreme Court, or that Republicans resoundingly lost the 2012 presidential election in which Obamacare was a prime issue. The law, their leaders say, is a "monstrosity," a "trainwreck" that must be fought by every means, even if that means closing down the government.

Now, no one would argue that the reform is perfect. Even without the distortions and abuse peddled by the right- and left-wing media alike, it is extremely hard to understand. Nor will it cover absolutely everyone. If you started from scratch, you would almost certainly go for some form of single-payer system, a universal, government-funded scheme of the sort that Truman advocated.

Determined not to make the Clintons' mistake, Obama consulted with every interested party: Democrats and Republicans, hospitals, private insurers, doctors and the pharmaceutical companies. He bent over backwards to retain the existing structure of employer-based coverage, even dropping proposals for a "public option" favoured by the left as a way of keeping the private insurers honest. In doing so, he bowed, in effect, to the conservatives' argument that an alternative state-run insurance scheme would pave the way for a single-payer system.

But, as Obama has painfully discovered, offer Republicans an olive branch and they'll use it to whip you. Since 2010, the Republican-controlled House has passed no fewer than 42 resolutions seeking to overturn Obamacare (albeit knowing that the Senate would reject every one.) Now it has shut down the government, even though 70 per cent of the US public disapproves of the tactic, and even right-wing commentators argue that the way to get rid of Obamacare is via the ballot box, not blackmail. Elect a Republican president and a Republican Congress, they say, then repeal the thing.

At state level, where Republicans dominate, the sabotage of Obamacare is endless. Many states have failed to set up health exchanges. Citizens are being urged to flout the law and pay a fine rather than obey the individual mandate that requires them to buy insurance. Most inexcusable of all, a swathe of red states is refusing to expand Medicaid, which helps the poor. That will be critical for the success of Obamacare – even though the federal government is picking up 100 per cent of the cost for the first three years, and 90 per cent thereafter.

Why this scorched-earth opposition? After all, the mandate was originally a Republican idea, put forward by the impeccably conservative Heritage Foundation some two decades ago. Obamacare, moreover, is based on the healthcare reform enacted in Massachusetts in 2006 under the state's then governor, Mitt Romney – the Republicans' White House candidate in 2012. And at a simple human level, why oppose a law providing cover for 28 million people who don't have it?

One reason is Republicans' visceral dislike of Obama, on political, personal or racist grounds – or a blend of all three. Ideologically, they are terrified not that healthcare reform will fail, with the dire consequences they predict, but that it will succeed.

Success would strike at the very core of Republican belief, that government is bad for you and should be reduced to the bare minimum to sustain a functioning state. Despite public wariness of the law as a whole, several of its main provisions are extremely popular (as the once reviled Medicare now is.) If Obamacare works, Americans would feel better about government in general; the terrible monster erected by Republican demonology would be seen to be benign, after all. What price the party's electoral prospects then?

We avoided the apocalypse – but 2013 will be no picnic

The world hasn't ended, but global leaders will still have to work hard to manage economic trials and social tensions

• 
• • Ha-Joon Chang
  • The Guardian, Sunday 30 December 2012 19.00 GMT

‘The eurozone is entering a make or break year, with the social fabric of the periphery countries stretched to the limit.' Illustration: Andrzej Krauze

 

 

The world did not end this year, as some people thought it would following a Mayan prophecy (well, at least one interpretation of it), but it seems pretty certain that next year is going to be tougher than this one.

We are entering 2013 as the Republican hardliners in the United States Congress does its utmost to weaken the federal government, using an anachronistic law on federal debt ceiling. Until the Republicans started abusing it recently, the law had been defunct in all but name. Since its enactment in 1917, the ceiling has been raised nearly a hundred times, as a ceiling set in nominal monetary terms becomes quickly obsolete in an ever-growing economy with inflation. Had the US stuck to the original ceiling of $11.5bn, its federal debt today would have been equivalent not even to 0.1% of GDP (about $15tn) – the current debt, which is supposed to hit the $16.3tn ceiling today, is about 110% of GDP.

A compromise will be struck in due course (as it was in 2011), but the debt ceiling will keep coming back to haunt the country because it is the best weapon with which the extremists in the Republican party can advance their anti-state ideology. This ideology has such a hold on American politics because it taps into the anxiety of the majority of the white population. Being squeezed from the top by greedy corporate elite and from the bottom by new immigrants, they seek solace in an ideology that harks back to the lost golden age of (idealised) 18th-century America, made up of self-defending (with guns), free-contracting (white) individuals who are independent of the central government. Unless mainstream American politicians can offer these people an alternative vision, backed up by more secure jobs and a better welfare system, they will keep voting for the extremists.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the eurozone is entering a make or break year, with the social fabric of the periphery countries stretched to the limit. With its GDP 20% lower than in 2008, with 25% unemployment rate and with the wages of most of those still in work down by 40% to 50%, it is a real touch and go whether the current Greek government can survive another round of austerity. Spain and Portugal are not yet where Greece is, but they are hurtling down that way. And even the infinitely patient Irish are beginning to vent their anger against the inequities of the austerity programme that has hit the poorest the hardest. Should any of these countries socially explode, the consequences could be dire, whether they technically stayed in the eurozone or not.

As for the UK, 2013 may become the year when it sets a dubious world record of having an unprecedented "triple-dip recession". Even if that is avoided, with high unemployment, real wages that are at best stagnant and swingeing welfare cuts, many people will struggle to make ends meet. In a letter to the Observer yesterday, the leaders of the city councils of Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield, have even warned of a "break-up of civil society", should the austerity programme continue.

European leaders need to work out new economic programmes with a more equitable sharing of the burden of adjustment, both within and between countries. Paradoxically, they can look towards Iceland, the canary that first died in the mine of toxic debt, for a lesson. The country has been recovering rather well, considering the scale of the banking crisis, while making spending cuts in a way that impose the least burden on the poorest: between 2008 and 2010, income of the poorest 10% fell by 9% while that of the richest 10% fell by 38%.

Things look brighter in the Asian countries, with their economies growing much faster and with even Japan ready to make a dash for growth through more relaxed monetary and fiscal policies. However, they – especially the two giants of China and India – have their own shares of social tension to manage.

Growth is slowing down in China. It is estimated to have grown by 7.5% in 2012, well below the usual rate of 9% to 10%. Some forecast that its growth rate will pick up again to above 8% in 2013, but others believe it will fall below 7%. Given the country's heavy reliance on exports to the US and the European Union, the more pessimistic scenario seems likely, as things don't look very good in those economies. With slower economic growth it will become more difficult to manage the social tension that has been bubbling up thanks to runaway inequality and high levels of corruption.

Management of social tension will be an even bigger challenge for India. Its economic growth has significantly slowed down since 2010, and few predict a major reversal of the trend in 2013. Add to this economic difficulty deepening economic, religious and cultural divisions, and you have a heady mixture, as we see in the social unrest following the recent gang rape and death of a young medical student.

If the political leaders of the major economies do not manage these social tensions well, 2013 could be a year in which the world takes a turn for the worse. It is a huge challenge, as it is like trying to fix a car while driving it. However, without fixing the malfunctioning car, we will not get out of the woods, however much extra fuel, like quantitative easing, we pour into the car.

Liberal Constipation

 George Monbiot

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today’s progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker(1), we have been too polite to mention the study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence(2). Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail which brought it to the attention of British readers last week(3). It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood(4). Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others—particularly “different” others—requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence, but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the “critical pathway” from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to “right-wing ideologies that promote coherence and order” and “emphasize the maintenance of the status quo”(5). Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write.

This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks, writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.

But what we now see among their parties—however intelligent their guiding spirits may be—is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won’t drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that manmade climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that “conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics.”(6) The result is a “shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology” which has “ominous real-world consequences for American society.”

Lofgren complains that “the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today”(7). The Republican party, with its “prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science” is appealing to what he calls the “low-information voter” or the “misinformation voter.” While most office holders probably don’t believe the “reactionary and paranoid claptrap” they peddle, “they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base”.

The madness hasn’t gone as far in the UK, but the effects of the Conservative appeal to stupidity are already making themselves felt. Yesterday the Guardian reported that recipients of disability benefits, scapegoated by the government as scroungers, blamed for the deficit, now find themselves subject to a new level of hostility and threats from other people(8).

These are the perfect conditions for a billionaires’ feeding frenzy. Any party elected by misinformed, suggestible voters becomes a vehicle for undisclosed interests. A tax break for the 1% is dressed up as freedom for the 99%. The regulation that prevents big banks and corporations from exploiting us becomes an assault on the working man and woman. Those of us who discuss manmade climate change are cast as elitists by people who happily embrace the claims of Lord Monckton, Lord Lawson or thinktanks funded by ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers: now the authentic voices of the working class.

But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls “terminal niceness”(9). They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.

Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It’s turkeys all the way down.

My Weltanschhaung - 7 Feb 2012

- Am I glad that England lost 3-0 to Pakistan at cricket. You can blame Ajmal's action, you can blame the DRS but you still are unable to score enough runs. The cry of World number 1 is not so shrill now and I can remove my ear plugs.

- I am not really sure the NHS bill is privatisation by the back door or is it the vested interests of doctors, managers and nurses crying foul. Unfortunately, only time will tell and by then it maybe too late.

- India refuses to take UK aid, the UK wants India to continue to take its aid. Am I the only person wondering where all this decades long aid has gone and who benefitted from it?

- Its a pity that Sarah Palin will not win the Republican nomination.

-  The US, UK and France are upset that they did not receive a carte blanche to invade Syria. Afetr Libya, they were deluded to think the Russians would cooperate.

- Who will benefit from a war with Iran?